A beginner’s guide to Tor: How to navigate through the underground Internet

[Xavier Torres]

A beginner’s guide to Tor: How to navigate through the underground Internet By Will Nicol



We live in an era of free-flowing data, where any person with an Internet connection has seemingly all the information in the world at their fingertips. Yet, while the Internet has greatly expanded the ability to share knowledge, it has also made issues of privacy more complicated, with many worrying their own personal information, including their activity on the Internet, may be observed without their permission. Not only are government agencies able to track an individual’s online movements, but so too are corporations, who have only become bolder in using that information to target users with ads. Unseen eyes are everywhere.

In this climate of data gathering and privacy concerns, a browser called Tor has become the subject of discussion and notoriety. Like many underground phenomena on the Internet, it is poorly understood, shrouded in the sort of technological mysticism that people often ascribe to things like hacking or bitcoins.

Tor is software that allows users to browse the Web anonymously. Developed by the Tor Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for anonymity on the internet, Tor was originally called The Onion Router because it uses a technique called onion routing to conceal information about user activity. Perhaps ironically, the organization receives the bulk of its funding from the United States government, which views Tor as a tool for fostering democracy in authoritarian states.

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